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Possible Duplicate:
Best way to confidently search files and contents in Windows without using an indexing service?

What in your opinion is the best Window's software for searching file content?

The search utility in Windows offers this but often misses valid files from the search results.

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    Possible duplicate superuser.com/questions/26593/…
    – ukanth
    Nov 6, 2009 at 12:16
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    no duplicate, the other threrad asking for content search 'without an indexing service' ... big difference.
    – Molly7244
    Nov 6, 2009 at 12:38
  • Well, that is the best way, isn't it? ;-)
    – Arjan
    Nov 6, 2009 at 12:47
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    There is one new option, which hasn't been discussed in this thread so far. It is the File Content Finder app from the App Store (disclaimer: I'm the developer)
    – Geo Systems
    Apr 29, 2019 at 12:10

2 Answers 2

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Agent Ransack is a free tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file!

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    Some shortcomings of Agent Ransack: 1) It must be invoked from GUI. No quick shortcut key. 2) It can only search only ONE specific folder and sub-folders. 3) Still too many mouse clicks involved. I expected some more quick tools like Launchy.
    – smwikipedia
    Jul 9, 2016 at 4:33
  • Um... that actually sounds like good options. 2.) I sure as hell wouldn't want it reading all the bytes of all the files on my hard disk; the more scoped the search is, the better. 1.) What a nightmare anything other than a GUI usage would be. Command line returning what... a list of filenames, or some complex structure with filenames and matching positions, which no program could decipher or do anything useful with anyway? This kind of needs a human in the loop. and 3) too many mouse clicks? Seriously?
    – Triynko
    Aug 29, 2017 at 21:11
  • I was used UltraSearch, it is good but don't have preview for search found in file content. It is just preview the whole file content. Agent Ransack can preview the file content at search found. Thank you.
    – vee
    Feb 8, 2021 at 6:12
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I use Agent Ransack which is a 'lite' version of File Locator Pro. You can get it here.

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